"Even today, Thelen and many other U.S. veterans are skeptical of any perils from X-rays."

What silly statement!! What a crock!! I don't like casual medical x-rays. My dentist really has to make a case to get me
to submit to his x-ray machine.

I never get the recommended "periodic diagnostic" x-rays.

My point, totally ignored in this article, is:

- that generic Nike equipment

-- (specifically excluding the HIPAR radar which was at very few sites - see note further down)

- did not generate x-rays with enough energy to get out of the tubes.

Frankly, I can't get it through the silly Liberal Arts heads

- that there are many kinds of radiation,
a whole study in its self

- and the effects of the many kinds and energies
on biological things (us) is another study.
And for better or worse, we are penetrated every instant
by natural and man-made radiation.

Even the carbon 14 in our DNA is radioactive !!
Ever hear of carbon dating?

And the potassium (to replace that hysterically dangerous sodium)
is radioactive - to a much smaller degree :-))

Maybe they don't care - or figure others don't care.

Facts are for Dilbert, lets have excitement and fun.

The electrons in a magnetron give up most of their energy
making microwave radiation, and hit the anode relatively
softly, making low energy x-rays. The low energy x-rays
are much less energetic than the x-rays generated in your
TV CRT !!

The low energy magnetron x-rays basically can't get through the glass
vacuum envelope. (never zero as this is a statistical thing)
In any case, your color TV CRT display is much more dangerous
from an x-radiation standpoint than our magnetrons -
50% higher voltages with the electrons striking the screen at full speed.
The electrons in a TV set do not slow down making microwaves.

The students quote me as saying
"'As a kid, I used to play in piles of asbestos,
and Iíve never had any health problems,' he said."

The first phrase is relatively accurate. Jerry Downs, our plumber, left a 3 ft. high pile in our basement for a few months.

And my sister and I played in the nice soft light gray stuff for a few days until our mother made us quit 'cause we were
tracking the stuff up from the basement and making a mess. (My sister and I are each over 70 and do not show any
asbestos related respiratory or other effects - neither of us ever smoked much.)

The second phrase is just plane bogus!

I prefer to use the politically incorrect word "lie"!!
What a silly statement attributed to me.
My list of health complaints (and a few problems)

- typical of a 60 year old male I'm told - (I'm over 70)
would fill a page - allergies, eye sight, hearing, endurance, feet get tired, left knee swells on long hikes, gout now under control, balding, teeth, some aging male things, ... do you really want to hear?

Small potato(e)s ;-))

"... created a website to honor the Nike programís history."

I don't try to "honor" anything - well maybe the flag and my word.
I'm basically a techie letting folks know about techie stuff.
I started the web page to let my kids know about the world,
good stuff, bad stuff, warts and all.

How that got distorted into "Honoring the Nike program's history"
is the student's interpretation.
I suppose they have to say something - just what?

OK - this web site is a great prop to start a conversation/e-mail :-)) (Like a pretty girl with a dog.) Yeah, I like that!

"and Thelen, who maintained the anti-aircraft systems from 1956 through 1958,
crawled under a radar to relive old times.

I bent over to show the visiting student "journalists" part of the tracking radar
electronics (the power amplifiers to drive the electric tracking motors).

Sadly, I have gained too much weight to "crawl under a radar",
and the wife would "comment" if I got grass stains on my clothing.
At no time did my knees, butt, elbows, hands, etc touch the ground! I did not crawl!!

OH - Look - They even got the years wrong :-)) I was in the military from Feb 1954 to Feb 1957. They looked like they
were taking notes - got the years wrong somehow.

A Dietman Glaner is quoted in part ""We never wore lead gloves."

- can you name any one or organization that issues lead gloves to work on anything?

- what kind of dexterity do you think you would get with lead gloves?

Maybe we should consider ourselves blessed that the Berkeley students
didn't express their political opinions -

But then again, they portrayed veterans as victimized, ignorant oafs.
Which does seem to be the Berkeley liberal view of anyone defending/advocating democracy.

Why is it that "liberals" seem to favor "dictatorship of the proletariat",
and consider themselves to be the proletariat to do the dictating?

Or am I missing their point, they are too ?chicken? to take on thugs,

like Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Kaisar, Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Saddam?

Cheers

Ed Thelen

--------------------

Added January 2006 when I cooled down a little -

"Journalists" wonder why "the rest of us" don't take them
seriously - this kind of "reporting" is just one of many examples - in big media and small -
of callus bigoted presentation of "facts".

The last sentence of the article is
"This story was produced for a course at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism."
One might ask if this is the Michael Moore School of Journalism.

OK - the piece was just a 'story' - a novel? - a historical novel? - with made up quotes? -

Who knows - maybe the authors just pass it off as a joke? - What's wrong with you? Can't you take a joke?